And Avery has a conversation with two of her new friends that she meets in Bardell, and they have a discussion over, oh, well, you know, her new friend Jade, her mother was murdered. And I think that in "We Deserve Monuments," in particular, the anticipatory grief is really front and center because it's the feeling of, I know that this person is about to die I know that our time is limited. HAMMONDS: Yeah, I think grief is just messy. But we also see it through others who lost loved ones many, many years before but who are still really hurting. SUMMERS: I wonder, what do you think this book says to us about grief? Because we, of course, see it through Avery, who knows that her time with her grandmother is short and that anticipatory grief. So I definitely modeled her a lot after people in my own family. Like, no, there were fights around the dinner tables, and there were wisecracks and jokes and stuff.
I wanted her to feel like a lot of our own family members because, you know, like, I personally didn't have a grandmother that was necessarily, like, a fountain of love and sweaters and warm hugs. It just - it came incredibly natural to me. But her wit and her humor - I don't know.
And so I think I gave it a lot to Mama Letty, this Black woman who has felt so ignored throughout her entire life. politics, and I was just so angry, and I had nowhere to put this anger. As we all know, it was a very volatile time in U.S. And that first draft, I started writing it in November 2016. HAMMONDS: So Mama Letty was actually the first character that came to me when I started writing the book. Tell us about her and why you give her this vibe of depth and mystery. I don't want to give any spoilers here, but there comes to be this incredibly shocking complexity to her story. She is grumpy and wisecracking but has this heart of gold. So we've just got to dig in here and talk about Mama Letty, Avery's grandmother. There's a lot in this book that will keep readers guessing, especially the character who sets everything in motion. SUMMERS: And as Avery tries to unravel a painful family secret, she also finds herself crushing hard on Simone, the girl next door. to go down to the small town in Georgia where she grew up because the family matriarch is dying and in her final days. HAMMONDS: She is on the cusp of her senior year when her mom decides to uproot the whole family from D.C. SUMMERS: Their main character is 17-year-old Avery Anderson. Like, I jokingly (laughter) call my book, like, "Gilmore Girls," but make it Black and gay, just, like, in relationships to the women in the story. JAS HAMMONDS: I wanted to tell a story about a daughter and a mother and a grandmother. In the book, Hammonds touches on the familiar through their own lens. And it just won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe book award for new talent. "We Deserve Monuments" is the debut novel by writer Jas Hammonds.
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